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Topic: Homemade Extractor (Read 5168 times)

Hi all. Just seeing if any of you guys have instructions or ideas for a homemade honey extractor. It can be a One-frame extractor or whatever. Hand or Crank extractor is fine. I am just seeing what you guys use if any of you use a homemade extractor. (Ugh, $300 is way to much for a 2 frame!) Looking for a extractor that is around $50 or so to make. Thanks guys.

"The opinion of experts once was that the production of beeswax in a colony required great quantities of nectar which, since it was turned into wax, would never be turned into honey. Until quite recently it was thought that bees could store seven pounds of honey for every pound of beeswax that they needed to manufacture for the construction of their combs--a figure which seems never to have been given any scientific basis, and which is in any case quite certainly wrong. The widespread view that if the combs were used over and over, through the use of the honey extractor, then the bees would be saved the trouble of building them and could convert the nectar thus saved into honey, was only minimally correct. A strong colony of bees will make almost as much comb honey as extracted honey on a strong honey flow. The advantage of the extractor, in increasing harvests, is that honey stored from minor flows, or gathered by the bees over many weeks of the summer, can easily be extracted, but comb honey cannot be easily produced under those conditions."

Richard Taylor on Comb Honey:

"A comb honey beekeeper really needs, in addition to his bees and the usual apiary equipment and tools, only one other thing, and that is a pocket knife. The day you go into producing extracted honey, on the other hand, you must begin to think no only of an extractor, which is a costly machine used only a relatively minute part of the year, but also of uncapping equipment, strainers, settling tanks, wax melters, bottle filling equipment, pails and utensils galore and endless things. Besides this you must have a place to store supers of combs, subject to damage by moths and rodents and, given the nature of beeswax, very subject to destruction by fire. And still more: You must begin to think in terms of a whole new building, namely, a honey house, suitably constructed, supplied with power, and equipped....

"All this seems obvious enough, and yet time after time I have seen novice beekeepers, as soon as they had built their apiaries up to a half dozen or so hives, begin to look around for an extractor. It is as if one were to establish a small garden by the kitchen door, and then at once begin looking for a tractor to till it with. Unless then, you have, or plan eventually to have, perhaps fifty or more colonies of bees, you should try to resist looking in bee catalogs at the extractors and other enchanting and tempting tools that are offered and instead look with renewed fondness at your little pocket knife, so symbolic of the simplicity that is the mark of every truly good life."

from The Comb Honey Book, by Richard Taylor

If you really want liquid honey, crush and strain is much quicker than a four frame no reversable hand crank extractor. Just make a double bucket strainer.

Assuming wax foundation you'd just cut it out and crush it into a double five gallon bucket strainer (Brushy Mt sells them but they are easy to make)

> Am I actually scraping the comb off the frames and crushing it?

I'm not sure what you mean by scraping it off the frames. Do you have plastic foundation? Then you might have to scrape it off the foundation. But if I didn't have an extractor I wouldn't use plastic foundation in the supers. Thin surplus is the nicest then you can make cut comb honey and not even bother with crushing and straining. You can get five buck a pound for cut comb.

> If thats what your talking about, wouldn't that be detramental to the bees?

Why would it be detrimental to the bees to crush the comb? There aren't any bees on it at the time. :) They will have to rebuild it, but building comb is what they do. Crush and strain and cut comb and chunk honey is what I did for the 26 years or so before I bought an extractor.

Alright yeah, I'm planning on using plastic foundation, so I would have to scrape it off the foundation. Thanks a lot :)

Extractors and equiptment can be sold when you decide to quit beeing. There may well be a local Beekeepers club in your area. Clubs usually have equiptment for members use. You can buy a decent two frame, stainless extractor for around 200 bucks plus shipping. Then again you will burn a considerable amount of gasoline chasing around and we all know how much that cost, don't we? :shock:

People, today, don't think and live like Richard Taylor appearently did. People used wash boards for clothes washing but lets face it; Would you use a wash board today? I, have used washing boards!!!

Your riddle: the doctor and the boy are not related. The boy has a doctor dad maybe, but you mention two seperate individuals who happen to be going fishing. :?:

I know I can crush and strain in a double five gallon bucket strainer much faster than I can extract in a two frame extractor. It doesn't start getting faster until you hit about an 18 frame radial. And I'm not even sure that's faster.

To extract two standard supers with 9 frames each in them in a 9/18 radial requires loading and unloading once. Load, spin and remove.

To extract two standard supers with 9 frames each in them in a 2 frame nonreverable requires you to load two frames and spin out half of the honey on one side, remove and reload spin out the other side, remove and reload, finish the first side and unload. Repeat this nine more times. That's loading and unloading 27 times to do 18 frames.

Crush and strain takes me about five to ten seconds per frame of my work. The draining takes a little longer, but does not require my assistance.

I should know, I did it for 26 years.

Taylor just died recentl and was still doing his honey with just a pocketknife.

Your riddle: the doctor and the boy are not related. The boy has a doctor dad maybe, but you mention two seperate individuals who happen to be going fishing.

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What's you answer to Shizzel's puzzle?

-The Actual Answer is the doctor is his mother. Isn't it weird how we assume doctors are guys? Hm. Interesting

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I assumed that the doctor was his mother

^^^^^ Good job :)

About beekeeping though. I plan on scraping the comb off of my duraguilt (Because that is what i use the most) and crushing it and straining it like Michael explained. I find that the easiest method and the least expensive :D

that is still currently active, Michael Bush says that the bees will not build back over the plastic on Duraguilt once the wax is removed. I have never used Duraguilt, but if this is true, you will either have to leave a layer of wax without hitting the plastic or else remove the duraguilt and replace it with new foundation (or use the frame with starter strips like Michael likes to do).

I just wanted to point out that if you go ahead and scrape down to the plastic, they probably will not rebuild.

Alright, so just scrape off all of the wax, honey etc. Except like a eighth inch?

I think it would be difficult to scrape off all the wax. You most likely would score the wax away from the plastic foundation in the process. One could brush a coating of melted wax back on the plastic foundation.